Godolphin Part 4

"What a change!" cried both.

"The strolling player risen into celebrity!"

"And the runaway boy polished into fashion!"

"You are handsomer than ever, f.a.n.n.y."

"I return the compliment," replied f.a.n.n.y; with a curtsey.

And now G.o.dolphin became a constant attendant at the theatre. This led him into a mode of life quite different from that which he had lately cultivated.

There are in London two sets of idle men: one set, the b.u.t.terflies of b.a.l.l.s; the loungers of the regular walks of society; diners out; the "old familiar faces," seen everywhere, known to every one: the other set, a more wild, irregular, careless race; who go little into parties, and vote b.a.l.l.s a nuisance; who live in clubs; frequent theatres; drive about late o' nights in mysterious-looking vehicles and enjoy a vast acquaintance among the Aspasias of pleasure. These are the men who are the critics of theatricals: black-neckclothed and well-booted, they sit in their boxes and decide on the ankles of a dancer or the voice of a singer. They have a smattering of literature, and use a great deal of French in their conversation: they have something of romance in their composition, and have been known to marry for love. In short, there is in their whole nature, a more roving, liberal, Continental character of dissipation, than belongs to the cold, tame, dull, prim, hedge-clipped indolence of more national exquisitism. Into this set, out of the other set, fell young G.o.dolphin; and oh! the merry mornings at actresses'

houses; the jovial suppers after the play; the buoyancy, the brilliancy, the esprit, with which the hours, from midnight to c.o.c.kcrow, were often pelted with rose-leaves and drowned in Rhenish.

By degrees, however, as G.o.dolphin warmed into his attendance at the playhouses, the fine intellectual something that lay yet undestroyed at his heart stirred up emotions which he felt his more vulgar a.s.sociates were unfitted to share.

There is that in theatrical representation which perpetually awakens whatever romance belongs to our character. The magic lights; the pomp of scene; the palace, the camp; the forest; the midnight wold; the moonlight reflected on the water; the melody of the tragic rhythm; the grace of the comic wit; the strange art that give such meaning to the poet's lightest word;--the fair, false, exciting life that is detailed before us--crowding into some three little hours all that our most busy ambition could desire--love, enterprise, war, glory! the kindling exaggeration of the sentiments which belong to the stage--like our own in our boldest moments: all these appeals to our finer senses are not made in vain. Our taste for castle-building and visions deepens upon us; and we chew a mental opium which stagnates all the other faculties, but wakens that of the ideal.

G.o.dolphin was peculiarly fascinated by the stage; he loved to steal away from his companions, and, alone, and unheeded, to feast his mind on the unreal stream of existence that mirrored images so beautiful. And oh!

while yet we are young--while yet the dew lingers on the green leaf of spring--while all the brighter, the more enterprising part of the future is to come--while we know not whether the true life may not be visionary and excited as the false--how deep and rich a transport is it to see, to feel, to hear Shakspeare's conceptions made actual, though all imperfectly, and only for an hour! Sweet Arden! are we in thy forest?--thy "shadowy groves and unfrequented glens"? Rosalind, Jaques, Orlando, have you indeed a being upon earth! Ah! this is true enchantment! and when we turn back to life, we turn from the colours which the Claude gla.s.s breathes over a winter's landscape to the nakedness of the landscape itself!

CHAPTER IX.

THE LEGACY.--A NEW DEFORMITY IN SAVILLE.--THE NATURE OF WORLDLY LIAISONS.--G.o.dOLPHIN LEAVES ENGLAND.

But then, it is not always a sustainer of the stage delusion to be enamoured of an actress: it takes us too much behind the scenes.

G.o.dolphin felt this so strongly that he liked those plays least in which f.a.n.n.y performed. Off the stage her character had so little romance, that he could not deceive himself into the romance of her character before the lamps. Luckily, however, f.a.n.n.y did not attempt Shakspeare. She was inimitable in vaudeville, in farce, and in the lighter comedy; but she had prudently abandoned tragedy in deserting the barn. She was a girl of much talent and quickness, and discovered exactly the paths in which her vanity could walk without being wounded. And there was a simplicity, a frankness, about her manner, that made her a most agreeable companion.

The attachment between her and G.o.dolphin was not very violent; it was a silken tie, which opportunity could knit and snap a hundred times over without doing much wrong to the hearts it so lightly united. Over G.o.dolphin the attachment itself had no influence, while the effects of the attachment had an influence so great.

One night, after an absence from town of two or three days G.o.dolphin returned home from the theatre, and found among the letters waiting his arrival one from his father. It was edged with black; the seal, too, was black. G.o.dolphin's heart misgave him: tremblingly he opened it, and read as follows:

"DEAR PERCY,

"I have news for you, which I do not know whether I should call good or bad. On the one hand, your cousin, that old oddity, Harry Johnstone, is dead, and has left you, out of his immense fortune, the poor sum of twenty thousand pounds. But mark! on condition that you leave the Guards, and either reside with me, or at least leave London, till your majority is attained. If you refuse these conditions you lose the legacy. It is rather strange that this curious character should take such pains with your morals, and yet not leave _me_ a single shilling.

But justice is out of fashion nowadays; your showy virtues only are the rage. I beg, if you choose to come down here, that you will get me twelve yards of house-flannel; I inclose a pattern of the quality.

Snugg, in Oxford Street, near Tottenham Court Road, is my man. It is certainly a handsome thing in old Johnstone: but so odd to omit me.

How did you get acquainted with him? The twenty thousand pounds will, however, do much for the poor property. Pray take care of it, Percy,--pray do.

"I have had a touch of the gout, for the first time. I have been too luxurious: by proper abstinence, I trust to bring it down. Compliments to that smooth rogue, Saville.

"Your affectionate, A. G.

"P. S.--Discharged Old Sally for flirting with the butcher's boy: flirtations of that sort make meat weigh much heavier. Bess is my only she-helpmate now, besides the old creature who shows the ruins: so much the better. What an eccentric creature that Johnstone was! I hate eccentric people."

The letter fell from Percy's hands. And this, then, was the issue of his single interview with the poor old man! It was events like these, wayward and strange (events which chequered his whole life), that, secretly to himself, tinged G.o.dolphin's character with superst.i.tion. He afterwards dealt con amore with fatalities and influences.

You may be sure that he did not sleep much that night. Early the next morning he sought Saville, and imparted to him the intelligence he had received.

"Droll enough!" said Saville, languidly, and more than a little displeased at this generosity to G.o.dolphin from another; for, like all small-hearted persons, he was jealous; "droll enough! Hem! and you never knew him but once, and then he abused me! I wonder at that; I was very obliging to his vulgar son."

"What! he had a son, then?"

"Some two-legged creature of that sort, raw and bony, dropped into London, like a ptarmigan, wild, and scared out of his wits. Old Johnstone was in the country, taking care of his wife, who had lost the use of her limbs ever since she had been married;--caught a violent--husband--the first day of wedlock! The boy, sole son and heir, came up to town at the age of discretion; got introduced to me; I patronised him; brought him into a decent degree of fashion; played a few games at cards with him; won some money; would not win any more; advised him to leave off; too young to play; neglected my advice; went on, and, d--n the fellow! if he did not cut his throat one morning; and the father, to my astonishment, laid the blame upon me!"

G.o.dolphin stood appalled in speechless disgust. He never loved Saville from that hour.

"In fact," resumed Saville, carelessly, "he had lost very considerably.

His father was a stern, hard man, and the poor boy was frightened at the thought of his displeasure. I suppose Monsieur Papa imagined me a sort of moral ogre, eating up all the little youths that fall in my way!

since he leaves you twenty thousand pounds on condition that you take care of yourself and shun the castle I live in. Well, well! 'tis all very flattering! And where will you go? To Spain?"

This story affected Percy sensibly. He regretted deeply that he had not sought out the bereaved father, and been of some comfort to his later hours. He appreciated all that warmth of sympathy, that delicacy of heart, which had made the old man compa.s.sionate his young relation's unfriended lot, and couple his gift with a condition, likely perhaps, to limit Percy's desires to the independence thus bestowed, and certain to remove his more tender years from a scene of constant contagion. Thus melancholy and thoughtful, G.o.dolphin repaired to the house of the now famous, the now admired Miss Millinger.

f.a.n.n.y received the good news of his fortune with a smile, and the bad news of his departure from England with a tear. There are some attachments, of which we so easily sound the depth, that the one never thinks of exacting from the other the sacrifices that seemed inevitable to more earnest affections. f.a.n.n.y never dreamed of leaving her theatrical career, and accompanying G.o.dolphin; G.o.dolphin never dreamed of demanding it. These are the connections of the great world: my good reader, learn the great world as you look at them!

All was soon settled. G.o.dolphin was easily disembarra.s.sed of his commission. Six hundred a year from his fortune was allowed him during his minority. He insisted on sharing this allowance with his father; the moiety left to himself was quite sufficient for all that a man so young could require. At the age of little more than seventeen, but with a character which premature independence had half formed, and also half enervated, the young G.o.dolphin saw the sh.o.r.es of England recede before him, and felt himself alone in the universe--the lord of his own fate.

CHAPTER X.

THE EDUCATION OF CONSTANCE'S MIND.

Meanwhile, Constance Vernon grew up in womanhood and beauty. All around her contributed to feed that stern remembrance which her father's dying words had bequeathed. Naturally proud, quick, susceptible, she felt slights, often merely incidental, with a deep and brooding resentment.

The forlorn and dependent girl could not, indeed, fail to meet with many bitter proofs that her situation was not forgotten by a world in which prosperity and station are the cardinal virtues. Many a loud whisper, many an intentional "aside," reached her haughty ear, and coloured her pale cheek. Such accidents increased her early-formed asperity of thought; chilled the gushing flood of her young affections; and sharpened, with a relentless edge, her bitter and caustic hatred to a society she deemed at once insolent and worthless. To a taste intuitively fine and n.o.ble the essential vulgarities--the fierceness to-day, the cringing to-morrow; the veneration for power; the indifference to virtue, which characterised the framers and rulers of "society"--could not but bring contempt as well as anger; and amidst the brilliant circles, to which so many aspirers looked up with hopeless ambition, Constance moved only to ridicule, to loathe, to despise.

So strong, so constantly nourished, was this sentiment of contempt, that it lasted with equal bitterness when Constance afterwards became the queen and presider over that great world in which she now shone--to dazzle, but not to rule. What at first might have seemed an exaggerated and insane prayer on the part of her father, grew, as her experience ripened, a natural and laudable command. She was thrown entirely with that party amongst whom were his early friends and his late deserters.

She resolved to humble the crested arrogance around her, as much from her own desire, as from the wish to obey and avenge her father. From contempt for rank rose naturally the ambition of rank. The young beauty resolved, to banish love from her heart; to devote herself to one aim and object; to win t.i.tle and station, that she might be able to give power and permanence to her disdain of those qualities in others; and in the secrecy of night she repeated the vow which had consoled her father's death-bed, and solemnly resolved to crush love within her heart and marry solely for station and for power.

As the daughter of so celebrated a politician, it was natural that Constance should take interest in politics. She lent to every discussion of state events an eager and thirsty ear. She embraced with masculine ardour such sentiments as were then considered the extreme of liberality; and she looked on that career which society limits to man, as the n.o.blest, the loftiest in the world. She regretted that she was a woman, and prevented from personally carrying into effect the sentiments she pa.s.sionately espoused. Meanwhile, she did not neglect, nor suffer to rust, the bright weapon of a wit which embodied at times all the biting energies of her contempt. To insolence she retorted sarcasm; and, early able to see that society, like virtue, must be trampled upon in order to yield forth its incense, she rose into respect by the hauteur of her manner, the bluntness of her satire, the independence of her mind, far more than by her various accomplishments and her unrivalled beauty.

Of Lady Erpingham she had nothing to complain; kind, easy, and characterless, her protectress sometimes wounded her by carelessness, but never through design; on the contrary, the Countess at once loved and admired her, and was as anxious that her protegee should form a brilliant alliance as if she had been her own daughter. Constance, therefore, loved Lady Erpingham with sincere and earnest warmth, and endeavoured to forget all the commonplaces and littlenesses which made up the mind of her protectress, and which, otherwise, would have been precisely of that nature to which one like Constance would have been the least indulgent.

CHAPTER XI.

CONVERSATION BETWEEN LADY ERPINGHAM AND CONSTANCE.--FURTHER PARTICULARS OF G.o.dOLPHIN'S FAMILY, ETC.

Lady Erpingham was a widow; her jointure, for she had been an heiress and a duke's daughter, was large; and the n.o.blest mansion of all the various seats possessed by the wealthy and powerful house of Erpingham had been allotted by her late lord for her widowed residence. Thither she went punctually on the first of every August, and quitted it punctually on the eighth of every January.

It was some years after the date of G.o.dolphin's departure from England, and the summer following the spring in which Constance had been "brought out;" and, after a debut of such splendour that at this day (many years subsequent to that period) the sensation she created is not only a matter of remembrance but of conversation, Constance, despite the triumph of her vanity, was not displeased to seek some refuge, even from admiration, among the shades of Wendover Castle.